A CASE STUDY ON QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND DIGITAL INNOVATION

By Ronnback and Henrik Eriksson

This paper deals with quality management and digital innovation and their
interrelationship. Innovation refer to an outcome perceived as new, regardless of whether it is an
idea, object or process, as well as to the process of creating this newness (see e.g. Slappendel
1996). Digital innovation refers to the use of information and communication technology as a
driving force for innovation that has an impact on the structure, processes and organizational
landscape (Yoo et al., 2010).
Previous research has shown that poor performance of digital innovation is a serious
inhibitor to good business performance and that high efficiency and effectiveness in digital
innovation is associated with high organizational performance (Carlson and McNurlin, 1992). In
a similar vein, studies have shown that an effective implementation of quality management
yields improved business performance (Hendricks and Singhal, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2001a, b;
Flynn et al., 1995; Eriksson and Hansson, 2002). In specific, digital innovation is strongly
connected to processes (Swanson, 1994), improvements, and internal and external customers
(Yoo et al., 2010), which are also seen as the core in quality management, see for example
Bergman and Klefsjo (2010).
Quality management and digital innovation are dealt with separately, not only during
practical work at organizations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the maturity of quality
management and digital innovation in an organization. Furthermore, the purpose is to analyze the
relationship between and learning opportunities of the two concepts based on that maturity.
Methodology
This research an explorative case study was carried out by conducting in-depth interviews with
both quality management and IT professionals, complemented with a document study.
Result and Conclusion
The analysis shows that, on an overall level, the majority of the principles studied
concerning quality management and digital innovation are categorized as uncommitted or
initiators, which is the second and third stage of development. This indicates that the maturity
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level of the two concepts studied is rather low. This study shows also that process orientation and
involvement of people are two important principles for digital innovation. Specifically, realizing
digital services requires a clear process structure.
In this study we conclude that top management prioritized digital innovation above
quality management, as digital innovation is seen as more concrete with clearer outcomes than
quality management. However, digital services cannot be realized because of problems or
uncertainties in the organization and its processes. This calls for working with quality
management proactively and not, as shown in this study, reactively. This study shows that the
principle of continuous improvement displays the lowest maturity for quality management. This
indicates that the STA as a whole is not focusing enough on development or innovation.
This in turn hinders digital innovation. Although there is a lack of commitment from
management, the quality management and IT professionals could work on improving their
internal dialogue, discussing how they individually work with the principles and how they could
collaborate in order to improve the overall management system and, in particular, digital
innovation. Certainly this study shows that both the approaches to quality management and
digital innovation can be reflected by the eight principles of ISO 9000. This can be explained by
the general characteristic of the principles, but also by the interrelationship and co-dependency
between quality management and digital innovation. The ISO standard has not incorporated
concepts such as innovation, sustainability or network, which both current practitioners and
researchers put a great deal of emphasis on. Hence, quality management and ISO could benefit
from reviewing the principles in order to keep up with recent research.